This morning on the drive to work I popped in Mutations. I haven’t listened to it in a while and wanted to see if it still had it. There are a lot of things I used to listen to all-the-time that haven’t aged very gracefully. But today I wish my commute was as long as the cd. I have to listen to the last twenty minutes after I import it when I get to my desk.

It’s been really gross the last couple of weeks. The sky has remained this blank grey colour while yielding no rain. Today however I can see the sun sneaking in at different parts as it finally rained most of the day yesterday. It’s not a sunny day as I drive in, but I can imagine once I step outside for lunch it could be. The air has that fresh smell.

1998 was nine years ago. I thought about this when I glanced at the year as I slipped the cd out of my carrying case and into the car stereo. The first time I heard Mutations was the drive back from Little Rock to Searcy. It was the first Beck album I bought. I listened to my brother’s copy of Odelay the summer after senior year of high school, and lived off of Charlie Allen’s Beck albums and his infamous Beck compilation tape freshman year of college.

I picked it up at that Best Buy in North Little Rock. Going there on weekends was such a big deal. Living in Searcy you had to drive 40 minutes to get to it; it was the nearest Best Buy. If we got to North Little Rock early for our movie showtimes, we would waste time at Best Buy. This of course was before we found out that the Breckinridge theater 20 minutes deeper into Little Rock featured stadium seating. We were broke, but spent our free time googling at things we couldn’t afford as we wandered through mindless commerce. If the Searcy Hastings didn’t have it, we’d drive 40 minutes to get it (or look at it). I probably wasn’t thinking about that on the first listen in the car with Bryan Creech, driving back on highway 67. But I’m thinking about it now as I drive by no less than three Best Buys on my way to work.

When I listen to track 8, Bottle of Blues, I can’t help but hear Homer Simpson - especially around the 2:42 mark. When I had my first PC, I reprogrammed all the windows alert messages to wav files that I found on the internet. Because I was so cool and so hip. And the internet could literally do anything. So when I got a warning message I heard Homer shout “Sweet Merciful Crap!” I beleive this is from the episode when the Simpsons go to the beach and Lisa pretends to be cool to get friends, who decorate the Simpsons car with seashells at the end, which makes Homer shout “Sweet Merciful Crap!” Apparently this happened late one night when I was listening to Mutations and lamely attempting to figure out whatever computer science project I was trying to finish. So now whenever I get 2:42 into Bottle of Blues, that’s what I think I hear - everytime - even now, nine years later.

I don’t miss being a poor computer science student. The next semester I changed my major to Radio/TV, or just ‘VCR’ as Heather describes it. On the long 20 hour trips from Phoenix to Searcy, JoMo and I would always make a point to slip in Mutations. It has always seemed to be one of those records that never gets old. Listening in the car and thinking about where you are, whether it be on the way to school where all your friends await to reunite with after the summer break, or nine years removed and wondering about all those friendships that just aren’t there anymore.